It is common practice for media content providers, such as television networks, movie studios, and the like, to include watermarks along with the content they distribute. Watermarks serve many purposes, but for copyright protection and enforcement, the principle purpose they serve is to identify the source of the content being distributed. For this reason, many films that are shown in movie theatres contain watermarks that contain information about the movie theatres in which the films are being displayed so that movie studios can trace pirated copies of films to the particular movie theatre in which they were pirated.
Traditionally, watermarks have been invisible to the naked eye, and require specialized watermark extraction software to analyze and/or detect the watermarks. For this reason, many media pirates and illegal copiers, such as those who illegally record films with camcorders in movie theatres, are not aware that the content they are recording contains watermarks. Since a watermark is not visible in the original content or the copied content, it is not immediately apparent to pirates whether a particular piece of content contains a watermark. Therefore, pirates may feel a greater sense of security in copying the content and may not be deterred from copying the content.